Introduction:The interactions between leukemic blasts and cells within the bone marrow environment affect oncogenesis, cancer stem cell survival, as well as drug resistance in hematological cancers. The importance of this interaction is increasingly being recognized as a potentially important target for future drug discoveries and developments. Recent innovations in the high throughput drug screening related technologies, novel ex-vivo disease-models, and freely available machine-learning algorithms are advancing the drug discovery process by targeting earlier undruggable proteins, complex pathways, as well as physical interactions (e.g., leukemic cell-bone microenvironment interaction).
Area covered:In this review, the authors discuss the recent methodological advancements and existing challenges to target specialized hematopoietic niches within the bone marrow during